International Journal of Scientific Research in Knowledge, 2(8), pp.

370-380, 2014
Available online at http://www.ijsrpub.com/ijsrk
ISSN: 2322-4541; 2014 IJSRPUB
http://dx.doi.org/10.12983/ijsrk-2014-p0370-0380
370
Full Length Research Paper
Prioritization of Remedial Approaches for Dealing with Dutch Disease Consequences
in Iran: an Application of Fuzzy-Modeling
Alireza Nasseri
1
, Hossein Sadeghi
1
, Bahareh Hashemlou
2
, Mohammadhadi Hajian
3*

1
Assistant Professor of Economics, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran
2
MSc student of Energy Economics, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran
3
PhD Candidate of Economics, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran
*Corresponding Author Email: mhhajian1980@gmail.com
Received 09 May 2014; Accepted 04 July 2014
Abstract. During last decades, Irans economy has been stricken by Dutch Disease. In order to apply appropriate remedial
policies for dealing with this phenomenon, it should be explained by scientific principles and its impacts on macroeconomic
variables are evaluated. In this regard, it is necessary to determine the ranking of proposed remedial policies. The objective of
present study is to detect and classify main fields affected by Dutch Disease and propose remedial policies based on the
comments of economists and experts. To achieve this purpose, a fuzzy decision-making approach is designed in three ranking
models. In addition, the short-run, medium-term, and long-run scheduling procedures are considered as the key decision-
making criterion. Results signify that the dominance degree of refinement of policies of National Development Fund is 3.79
dedicating that it is the first priority among the six alternatives. The next priorities are refinement of government budget
policies, improving the monetary policies, refinement of policies of foreign trade sector, refinement the relative price
mechanism, and refinement the policies of exchange rate whose dominance degrees are respectively 3.508, 3.283, 1.735,
1.582 and 1.096. It is concluded that among remedial policies, refinement of policies of National Development Fund and
refinement of government budget policies are found as the most preferable policies in the viewpoints of economists.
Obviously, implement of these remedial policies can work for treatment of the disease. Moreover, the results of sensitivity
analysis evince that all three models proposed in this research are constant and not affected by threshold values.
Keywords: Dutch Disease; Irans economy; fuzzy decision-making; prioritization; ranking.
1. INTRODUCTION
Growing export in an economic sector acts as a
double-edged sword. On one hand, export increase
results in the enhancement of national income and
economic welfare. On the other hand, it can interrupt
the balanced growth of the economic sectors; to be
precise, the non-tradable sectors whose products are
not competitive in the international markets are
developed; while, tradable sector is weakened. In the
research literature, this phenomenon is called as
Dutch Disease (Ismail, 2005).
Dutch disease was introduced to the literature;
first, on 1960s, when the huge gas reservoirs were
explored in the North Sea of Netherland. For the
national income, gained by gas export, increased, the
value of national currency of Netherland was
enhanced; leading industry sector to lose its
competitive advantage. The term Dutch Disease
was imputed by the Economist Journal on 1977 for
explaining the industrial deflation observed in
Netherland. To cope with this harmful phenomenon,
Netherland government applied several economic
policies; all bearing unsatisfactory results. Since 1977,
whenever this phenomenon occurs in any country, it is
referred as Dutch Disease (Qorbani, 2011). It is
noticeable that Dutch Disease is not restricted to
exploration of gas reservoirs; as suggested by Corden
and Neary (1982), the disease may occur by other
causes such as the rise in international price of
tradable goods; for example, increase of demand for
tradable goods in Switzerland, technological
advancement in merchant sector in Japan and Ireland,
natural resource exploration in England, Bauxite
industry in Jamaica, petroleum industry in Venezuela,
gold exploration in Australia, and increase of coffee
price in Colombia. In Iran; however, it is believed that
the main origin of Dutch Disease is the income gained
by oil export. The first evidence of Dutch Disease in
Iran emerged on 1974, when the four-time increase in
oil price resulted in the twice rise in government
budget. The government spent the budget surplus for
Nasseri et al.
Prioritization of Remedial Approaches for Dealing with Dutch Disease Consequences in Iran: an Application of Fuzzy-
Modeling
371
free education and reducing the price of basic
commodities. As a result, the import increased while
domestic products decreased due to 14% decrease in
the oil income during 1976 to 1978, which led to an
economic depression. Besides, the rise in money
liquidity resulted in 35% inflation on 1978.
Meanwhile, the government, which had spent an
enormous fund on public budget, was rather unable to
respond public demands due to drop in oil price
(Khezri, 2009). In order to investigate Dutch Disease
in Iran, it is important to consider the trend of oil
income of Iran. Figure 1 presents trend of oil income
from 1980 to 2012. As represented in the figure,
despite the increase and decrease in imports, the
annual oil income had little fluctuation from 1980 to
2001 and was around 20 billion USD. Since 2001, the
increase in global oil price has resulted in a
considerable rise in oil income; as in 2011, oil income
of Iran was around 120 billion USD. During these
years the injection of oil income to the national
economy causes a considerable development of Dutch
Disease in the country.

1.1. Theoretical principles

The mechanism of Dutch Disease in oil-exporting
countries is performed by two factors: Resource
Movement Effect and Spending Effect. To explain
this phenomenon, commodities are classified into two
categories:
Tradable goods that are all commodities
internationally tradable, such as all export and import
goods; whose, prices are determined in the
international markets.
Non-tradable goods that are not transacted in the
international markets due to their high volume, low
value, high transportation costs or other government
trade controls and are limited to the domestic markets.
Therefore, these goods would have different prices in
different countries despite the constant transaction
rates.
The sudden raise of the oil incomes causes in
surplus in balance of payments and causes aggregated
demand to be increased. If this surplus is spent for
monetary policies, the economy demand would
dramatically rise. Besides, if both tradable and non-
tradable are considered as normal goods (revenue
elasticity is greater than zero for both goods), the
demand for both goods will rise. It is obvious that
after economy demand increases, the price inflation
would ultimately depend to the supply response. Since
supply of non-tradable goods is non-elastic in short-
run and, on the other hand, supply of tradable goods
can be increased through the imports, the relative
price of the non-tradable goods would be increased.
As the real exchange rate is equal to the ratio of price
of non-tradable goods to of tradable ones (REXR =
PN / PT), the real currency price will increase due to
increase of relative price of the non-tradable goods
and their profitability; causing portable resources to
remove from the economy sector and transfer to the
non-tradable sector. Such movement of resources
towards the profitable sectors is called as Movement
Effect, while the weakening of the tradable sectors
and change in the relative prices is typically known as
Spending Effect. Higher disposable income and
profitability as well as higher relative price for non-
tradable goods, and also the lower production of
tradable goods because of their lower elative prices, in
general, lead to the increase in imports, decrease in
non-oil exports, and interruption of trade balance
(Tabari, 1993). Furthermore, exchange of the income,
gained from export, from international currencies into
the local currency results monetary base and money
liquidity to enhance; which, is another problem arising
from Dutch Disease in the oil-exporting countries.
With regard to the fact that government owns oil
and possesses its income, the main cause of Dutch
Disease in oil-based economies is government budget.
Reviewing the mechanism of Dutch Disease in
economy of Iran reveals that the governments fiscal
policies are affected by the oil income. The share of
oil income in the government budget is much more
than tax. Injection of oil income to the economy
through government budget is the main channel for
emergence of Dutch disease in the country. The rise in
government expenditure via exchange of foreign
currencies earnings, obtained by oil export, into the
local currency, which in turn leads monetary base and
liquidity to increase, results in an increase in
aggregated demand of economy. Such a demand in
the tradable sector can be responded through the
imports; whereas, in the non-tradable sector of the
economy, due to lack of imports, a price raise is
inevitable. Therefore, increase of the relative price of
the non-tradable goods to of tradable ones leads to the
reinforcement of the real exchange rate, followed by
the growing rate of imports and decreased non-oil
exports. Hence, one of the consequences of Dutch
Disease in the country is the weakness of its
computability in the international markets.
According to the fact that Dutch Disease has been
recently growing in the Irans economy and is now
one of major economic problems in Iran, it is essential
to design and apply appropriate remedial policies
based on the scientific principles as well as
considering the effect of this phenomenon on different
sectors of Irans economy. Dutch Disease is believed
to influence on three parts of Irans economy;
including, the real, monetary, and economic sectors.
Six main approaches for dealing with consequences of
Dutch disease are refinement of:
International Journal of Scientific Research in Knowledge, 2(8), pp. 370-380, 2014
372
1. Monetary policies, 2.Mechanism of the relative
prices, 3. Policies of government budget, 4. Policies of
balance of payment, 5. Policies of exchange rate, and
6. Policies of National Development Fund.
It is noticeable that this disease has been
established in economy of Iran for a long time and its
consequences; certainly, cannot be removed
completely in a short-run period. Therefore, the
remedial policies are considered for short-run (one
year), middle-run (five years), and long-run (Iran's 20-
year vision plan) periods.

1.2. Empirical literature

The literature review of the Dutch Disease
demonstrates many studies working on its ominous
consequences; including, reduction of economic
growth and productivity in the countries dependent to
natural resources, such as those performed by
Gylfason (2001), Sachs and Warner (1995, 1999, and
2001), Salai-i- Martin and Suberamanian (2003),
Stevens (2003), Papyrakis and Gerlagh (2003), Davis
and Tilton (2005), and Mehrara (2008). However,
some studies have been conducted on undermining the
agriculture sector due to Dutch Disease in developing
oil-exporting countries. Fardmanesh (1991), Olusi and
Olagunju (2005), Corden and Neary (1982), Van
winbergen (1984), Krugman (1987), and Matsuyama
and Gylfason(1999) studied on negative impacts of
resource transfer to other sectors, due to abundance of
natural resources.
Yet, the studies performed in Iran, mainly, focused
on various analytical descriptive methods applied to
explore influences of real exchange rate increase,
tradable sectors weakening, and non-tradable sectors
strengthening, emerged from oil incomes in the
country. Some of such works conducted by
TabariZadeh (1993), Khodaveysi (1997), Moulabeygi
(2005), AmiriMoghadam (1999), Fardi (2007), and
KhoshAkhlagh and Mousavi (2006). In addition,
Bakhtiari (2001), Pasban (2004), and Bahrami and
Farshchi (2008) explored the anti-agriculture
phenomenon induced by the enhanced oil income in
Iran.
However, no study has been conducted in Iran on
planning and prioritization of available choices for
remedy of the consequences of Dutch Disease by a
fuzzy-ranking approach. Therefore, the present study
looks at the phenomenon differently from the
viewpoint of both the subject and the method. Some
works conducted on programming are as below.
Li et al (2010) designed a model for planning the
systems under uncertainty conditions by combined
fuzzy and stochastic programming technique.
Additionally, Cai et al (2009) designed a
comprehensive system for management of renewable
energies based on integer linear programming (ILP),
two-step programming, and fuzzy logic-based
programming.

2. MATERIALS AND METHODS

2.1. Fuzzy Ranking Model

The fuzzy set theory was first introduced by Zadeh on
1965 to deal with vague, imprecise and uncertain
problems. The lack of data is the main reason for
uncertainty in many problems. Fuzzy set theory has
been utilized as a modeling tool for complex systems
that can be controlled by humans but hard to define
exactly. More detailed discussion of fuzzy set theory
can be found in Zimmerman 1987, Lin 1995 and Ross
1995.
In this paper, an outranking approach is used to
model an imprecise preference structure in order to
select the best solution for the problem. The
performance of each criterion for an alternative is
described as a linguistic term related to a fuzzy set.
The proposed approach is also applied to design
evaluation (Wang, 1997). The fuzzy preference
relation is utilized to compare two alternative
performances for each criterion (Nakamura, 1986). As
a result, a set of ranking relations is obtained. Three
preference models are developed to evaluate available
alternatives to get the best result. Each criterion of
performance is estimated with a linguistic term
represented by a fuzzy number. The fuzzy preference
relation is used to discover the imprecise preference
relations between designed alternatives. The fuzzy
preference relation R on a set A is a fuzzy set on the
product A*A, such that .
Let be the fuzzy preference relation
between a and b, where . Then P(a) and P(b)
are reciprocal and sum of them is equal to 1
(Zimmermann,1987).
The Greater value of P(a, b) means a stronger
intensity of preference. The fuzzy preference relation
between two alternatives a and b for criterion i is
obtained (i.e. gi(a),iC) by a pair-wise comparison
of gi(a) and gi(b) which show the linguistic
performance of alternatives a and b, respectively. gi(a)
and gi(b) are represented by fuzzy numbers. In this
paper Hamming distance is used to obtain the
preference relations between two alternatives for each
criterion as mentioned by Tseng and Klein, 1989. The
fuzzy preference relationship is given as relation (1):

(1)
Nasseri et al.
Prioritization of Remedial Approaches for Dealing with Dutch Disease Consequences in Iran: an Application of Fuzzy-
Modeling
373
Where D(a, b) is the area where a dominates b; D(a,
0) the area of a, D(b, 0) the area of b;
intersection areas of a and b. As seen from this
equation, preference relations are obtained by using
related areas under fuzzy membership functions
(Wang, 1997; Barajas & Agard, 2010). Three
preference models are as follows.

Table 1: Evaluation results for each project
remedial strategies
Period
Short-run Middle-run Long-run
1. Refinement the monetary policies Relatively good Good Medium
2. Refinement of relative price mechanisms Poor Medium Medium
3. Refinement policies of government budget Very good Very good Medium
4. Refinement the policies of balance of payment Relatively poor Medium Average
5. Refinement the policies of exchange rate Relatively good Medium Relatively poor
6. Refinement the policies of National Development Fund Medium Relatively good Relatively good
Reference: Economists and Experts comments
Reference: Economists and Experts comments

Table 2: The fuzzy preference relations among the alternatives of each criterion1
6 5 4 3 2 1 6 5 4 3 2 1
Middle-run Short-run Alternatives
0.084 1 1 0.1 1 0.5 0.916 0.5 1 1 1 0.5 1
0.084 0.5 0.5 0 0.5 0 0 0 0.084 0 0.5 0 2
1 1 1 0.5 1 0.9 1 1 1 0.5 1 0 3
0.084 0.5 0.5 0 0.5 0 0.084 0 0.5 0 0.916 0 4
0.084 0.5 0.5 0 0.5 0 0.916 0.5 1 0 1 0.5 5
0.5 0.916 0.916 0 0.916 0.084 0.5 0.084 0.916 0 1 0.084 6
Long-run
0 0.916 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 1
0 0.916 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 2
0 0.916 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 3
0 0.916 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 4
0 0.5 0.084 0.084 0.084 0.084 5
0.5 1 1 1 1 1 6
Reference: authors calculations

Table 3: Relative importance of the scales
Linguistic expression Numerical scale
Very important 3
Important 2
Relatively important 1
Unimportant 0
Reference: (Grungor and Arikan, 2000)

Table 4: Relative importance of criteria
Criterion Numerical scale Normalized weight
Short-run 1 0.166
Middle-run 2 0.334
Long-run 3 0.50


1
The alternatives identify refinement policies for reduction of Dutch Disease consequences and the criterion is length of time
(short-run, middle-run or long-run period).
International Journal of Scientific Research in Knowledge, 2(8), pp. 370-380, 2014
374
where Pi, Qi and Ii are irreflexive and
antisymmetric relations that depict respectively strict
preference, weak preference and indifference.
The preference threshold pi and indifference
threshold qi are used to discriminate between
indifference, strict preference, and weak preference of
two alternatives for criterion i. If the difference
between gi(a) and gi(b) does not exceed qi, then a and
b are not considered significantly different. If the
difference is greater than pi, then it means that a is
strictly preferred to b. The value of the indifference
threshold may range from the smallest value that does
not distinguish between two alternatives to the
greatest value that allows one to distinguish between
two alternatives. According to the three preference
relations outranking is as relation (3) (Roy, Vincke,
1984).



(Outranking)



(3)

In relation (3), , the set of a's strictly
preferred to b, , the set of a's strictly
preferred to b, , the set of b's strictly
preferred to a, represents the cardinality of the set
x.
The above relations imply that project a outranks b
if (1) no criterion considers that concept b is strictly
preferred to a, and (2) the number of criteria which
consider that a is preferred to b is more than the
number of criteria which consider that b is weakly
preferred to a. Otherwise, a is incomparable to b.

4.2. The semi-order preference model

This model is used to obtain the nondominance set of
alternatives when the relative importance of each
criterion is predictable. It is considered in relation (4).






(4)


The outranking relation defined as relation (5).

:

(Outranking)



(5)

In equation (4), and
, wi is the relative importance of
criterion i.
a outranks b, if 1) no concept b is strictly preferred
to a, 2) the sum of weighted number of criteria that a
is preferred to b is greater than the sum of weighted
number of criteria that b is preferred to a. Otherwise a
is incomparable to b.

4.3. The complete-preorder preference model

The complete-preorder preference model is utilized to
rank the set of alternatives in a complete order so that
the most promising best" alternative is selected. This
model is a special type of the pseudo-order preference
model; herein, qi =pi =0; , that is, threshold
value is not used. The degree of dominance is used to
determine the complete-preorder preference model. A
weighted function is used and defined as relation (6).

(6)
where wi is the relative importance of criteria i and
the total weight of criteria is equal to 1. The degree of
dominance of alternative a, simultaneously, over other
alternatives is defined as relation (7):

(7)
Nasseri et al.
Prioritization of Remedial Approaches for Dealing with Dutch Disease Consequences in Iran: an Application of Fuzzy-
Modeling
375
The degree of dominance of alternative a which
simultaneously preferred to b is obtained by relation
(8):




(Outranking)


(Indifference)

(8)

Our environment is a finite set of fuzzy numbers
used to express an imprecise level of performance of
each criterion. Seven levels are used: very poor,
poor, fairly poor, medium, fairly good,
good and very good. The linguistic terms are
transformed into fuzzy number with Figure 2 and are
listed in Table 1 (Zulal Gungor and Feyzan Arikan,
2000)
In this research, the experts in Dutch Disease were
asked to fill some questionnaires, then the weighted
averages of the questionnaire were calculated, and
finally the derived results were converted to the
linguistic expressions listed in Table 1.
As shown in Table 2, the fuzzy ranking relations
can be derived using eq. 1 for 6 choices shown in
Table 1. Considering the preferences expressed in
Table 1, the developed model for ranking the
corrective strategies for Dutch disease in Iran can be
summarized as table 2.


Fig. 1: The income gained from oil export in Iran (in billion USD)
Reference: International Monetary Fund (IMF) and www.economywatch.com

3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

The literature review declares that the last researches
worked on the special aspects of Dutch Disease. The
advantage of the present paper in compare with the
last ones is considering different issues of the problem
and presenting the comprehensive investigation on the
consequences of Dutch Disease in Iran as well as
recommending the remedial suggestions for dealing
with this problem. For this, the ideas of experts about
remedial solutions are gathered by questionnaires. For
the information extracted from experts comments are
qualitative and nondeterministic, the fuzzy decision
making approach is employed in order to determine
the position of each remedial solutions and rank them
based on the experts views. Researches mentioned in
literature review emphases each one on the part of
problems related to Dutch Disease and the impact of
such problems on the economic variables. As no study
has been conducted in Iran on planning and
prioritization of available choices for remedy of the
consequences of Dutch Disease, the main difference
of the present study is to survey the problem
expansively by looking at various issues of the
disease. The results of survey on several manners of
Dutch Disease and ranking the remedial strategies are
presented in the next parts of paper.

International Journal of Scientific Research in Knowledge, 2(8), pp. 370-380, 2014
376

Fig. 2: Linguistic scale of fuzzy numbers

Table 5: Weight ranking matrix
6 5 4 3 2 1 Alternatives
0.458 0.875 0.75 0.45 0.75 0.5 1
0.027 0.625 0.43 0.25 0.5 0.25 2
0.5 0.958 0.75 0.5 0.75 0.55 3
0.041 0.625 0.5 0.25 0.569 0.25 4
0.18 0.5 0.375 0.041 0.375 0.125 5
0.5 0.819 0.958 0.5 0.972 0.541 6
Reference: Research results

Table 6: The degree of dominance of alternatives
Alternatives Dominance level
1 3.283
2 1.582
3 3.508
4 1.735
5 1.096
6 3.79
Reference: Research results

3.1. Results of Pseudo-order preference model

As the relative importance of the criteria is unknown,
Pseudo-order preference model is used for a set of
dominant and non-dominant alternatives
(Zimmermann, 1987) and the model output is shown
in the ranking graph. Each node in ranking graph
presents an alternative project while the arcs show the
interrelationships between two alternatives. If
alternative a is superior to b, then an electrical arc is
developed between a and b. The ranking graph shown
in Figure 3 presents Pseudo-order preference model
for the state p
i
= 0.85 and q
i
= 0.25.
The ranking graph shown in Figure 3 is obtained
by relation (5) (and p
i
= 0.85 and q
i
= 0.25). Then, the
dominant and non-dominant sets are derived as:

Where, S
D
represents the dominant set implying
that no other alternative is dominant to the members
of dominant set and S
ND
represents non-dominant set.
As shown in Figure 3, alternatives 1 and 6 (which are
refinement the monetary policies and refinement the
National Development Fund, respectively) have
priority over the other alternatives. Alternative 3
(refinement the policies of government budget),
alternatives 4 and 5 (refinement the policies of
exchange rate and refinement the policies of balance
of payment, respectively), and alternative 2
(refinement of relative prices mechanisms) are placed
in the next positions.

Nasseri et al.
Prioritization of Remedial Approaches for Dealing with Dutch Disease Consequences in Iran: an Application of Fuzzy-
Modeling
377

Fig. 3: The graph of Pseudo-order preference model


Fig. 4: ranking graph of the semi-order preference model when q
i
= 0.25


Fig. 5: Ranking graph for complete-preorder preference model

3.2. The semi-order preference model

Table 3 lists relative importance of each criterion in
terms of linguistic conditions. Besides, Table 4 shows
the calculated normal weights. To derive the results
shown in Table 4, first a survey performed on the
experts, the weighted average of the results was
calculated, and the relative importance of time
criterion was obtained.
Once indifference threshold is 0.25 (q
i
= 0.25) and
the ranking relations are obtained based on relation
(5), the dominant and non-dominant sets are extracted
as follows which are shown in Figure 4.

Once the periods (short-run, medium-run, and
long-run) were assigned with a different weight and
importance, alternatives 6 and 3 (refinement the
policies of National Development Fund and
refinement the policies of government budget,
respectively) were ranked by the model as the highest
priorities. In this regard, alternatives 1, 4, and 2 and 5
were ranked as the next priorities.

3.3. Results of the complete-preorder preference
model
Complete-preorder preference model detects best
project among 6 introduced alternatives. Weighted
ranking matrix is obtained based on eq. 3 and is
presented in Table 5. Dominance level of each
alternative (shown in Table 6) is calculated using eq.
4. Ranking graph, obtained by applying eq. 5, is
presented in Figure 5. Among the presented
alternatives, alternative 6 is determined as the highest
priority. The next ranks according to their importance
are 3, 1, 4, 2, and 5; precisely, Refinement policies of
government budget, Refinement the monetary
policies, Refinement the policies of balance of
payment, Refinement of relative price mechanisms
and Refinement the policies of exchange rate are the
next alternatives recommended for remedy of Dutch
Disease in the viewpoint of Iranian economists.

1 6 3 1
4
2 5
1
2
4
3
5
6
1
2
3
5
4
6
International Journal of Scientific Research in Knowledge, 2(8), pp. 370-380, 2014
378
4. CONCLUSION

Different organizations, institutes, and sectors are
consistently making decisions with various strategies,
tactics, and operations in order to achieve their goals.
Due to the unclear nature of information and
criticality of the decision making process, fuzzy logic
method was applied in this study. Due to the
imprecise information of input variables, which are
expressed as linguistic terms; including, highly
important, medium important, and low important, the
fuzzy logic can be of a great interest in terms of
human perspective.
Based on the results obtained from three proposed
models, alternative 6 (refinement the policies of
National Development Fund is prioritized over the
other fiver alternatives. Once applying the Pseudo-
order preference model for ranking the alternatives, it
is clearly observed that strategies; including,
refinement the monetary policies and refinement
the policies of National Development Fund are the
top priorities; alternative 3 (refinement the
government budget policies) stands in the second
place; alternatives 5 and 4 (refinement the polices of
exchange rate and refinement the policies of
balance of payment, respectively) is the third
priority; and, alternative 2 (refinement the
mechanisms of relative prices) stands in the last
position of this ranking system.
In the case of applying the semi-order preference
model for ranking the applied policies, alternatives 6
and 3 are prioritized over the other alternatives;
alternative 1 is in the second place; alternative 4
stands in the third position; and alternatives 2 and 5
have the least priority as compared to the other
alternatives.
Based on the results of the complete-preorder
preference model, alternative 6 is determined as the
most important strategy. Alternatives 3, 1, 4, 2, and 5
stand in the second to sixth positions in the order of
their ranking.
In order to make sensitivity analyses, we changed
pi and qi which are, respectively, preference and
indifference thresholds. The results of senility analysis
indicate that due to change of pi and qi the difference
priority of the alternatives gets more significant; but,
the ranking of alternatives has no change; implying
that in any of these models and considering the
mentioned criteria, ranking of the alternatives is
independent from pi and qi, indicating the explanatory
power of the proposed model.
The policy makers and planners of the national
economy should focus their attention to the
mechanism of National Development Fund, because
of its importance as compared to the other 5
alternatives, and also precede other refinement
policies for dealing with consequences of Dutch
disease. To reach this purpose, the elaborate
investigation of all mentioned strategies is required in
order to find the operational method for remedy of the
Dutch Disease in Iran. The main objective of this
study is, firstly, to detect and introduce the main fields
affected by Dutch disease and, secondly, detect and
classify the refinement strategies of Dutch disease in
Iranian economy considering the comments and
opinions of the economists and experts who
conducted vast studies on this phenomenon. Finally,
using the fuzzy decision making approach and
considering the most important time criterion and
classifying it into short-run, middle-run, and long-run
periods, 3 ranking models were proposed. In this way,
it would be possible to apply the available strategies
with a high confidence.

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380



Dr. Alireza Nasseri was born on 1956. He graduated from Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran on
1979 in the Bachelor of Economics. Then he continued his education at Tarbiat Modares University,
Tehran, Iran and got his M. Sc. And PhD respectively on 1993 and 2002. Dr Nasseri is now an
assistant professor of economics at Economic Development and Planning Department, Management
and Economics Faculty, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran. His education in PhD of
Economics. His academic expertise is econometrics and general evaluation. He works as a lecturer at
university in courses such as Economic Evaluation of Projects and Irans Economy for M.SC and PhD
students. He handled more than 30 graduate theses as a supervisor or advisor. He published more than
20 papers in the field of economics in Persian and English journals.




Dr Hossein Sadeghi was born on 1958 / Tehran, Iran. He got his B. SC of Economics on 1986 from
Allameh Tabatabyi University, Tehran, Iran. Then he continued his education at Tarbiat Modares
University, Tehran, Iran in Master and PhD of Economics respectively on 1990 and 1994. He was a
lecturer from 1990 to 1995 at Emam Hossein University, Tehran, Iran. He is a member of scientific
board of economics from 1996 until now at Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran. He published
many books and research papers in different fields of economics such as Energy Economics, Natural
Resources Economics, Islamic Economics and Macroeconomics in Persian and English journals. He has
taught different economic courses such as microeconomics, energy economics, natural resources
economics, sport economics, etc. at Emam Hossein and Tarbiat Modares University. He also worked as
supervisor and advisor of many Master and PhD theses at these universities. He is now assistant professor of economics at
Economic Development and Planning Department, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran.






Bahareh Hashemlou was born on 1990 / Tehran, Iran. She finished her education at school on 2007 with
honor and average mark of 19.75 out of 20. Then, she continued her education at Economic Sciences
University, Tehran, Iran. On 2012, she got her Bachelor of Industrial Economics with honor and
average mark of 19.29 out of 20 from Economic Sciences University. Then she got accepted in Master
of Energy Economics at Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran. She ranked first at high school and
university as well. She was a teacher assistant (TA) at bachelor level in courses statistics and
econometrics. She presented two papers about energy economics at seminars. She is now a Master
student working on her thesis at Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran.





Mohammadhadi Hajian was born in 06/09/1980 / Fasa, Iran. On September 1999, he started his
academic education in the major of Agricultural Economics at Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman,
Iran. He graduated in B. Sc on February 2004. Then, he continued his education in M. Sc. at Tarbiat
Modares University, Tehran, Iran from September 2003. He got his M. Sc. of Agricultural Economics on
February 2006. He began his education at PhD on September 2010 and is now a PhD candidate of
Economics at Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran. He has many research papers in different fields
of economics in Persian and English journals. He worked as a lecturer in courses such as
macroeconomics, microeconomics, economic evaluation, economic systems and economic principals at
Bachelor and Master level in Payame Nour University, Economic Sciences University and Tarbiat
Modares University. He also has worked for many years as economic expert and economic consultant.